Section 8

We should go towards the Schoellenen gorge¹, and as we went, our fresh morning senses would gather together a thousand factors for our impression of this more civilised world. A Modern Utopia will have done with yapping about nationality, and so the ugly fortifications, the barracks and military defilements of the earthly vale of Urseren will be wanting. Instead there will be a great multitude of gracious little houses clustering in college-like groups, no doubt about their common kitchens and halls, down and about the valley slopes. And there will be many more trees, and a great variety of trees — all the world will have been ransacked² for winter conifers. Despite the height of the valley there will be a double avenue along the road. This high road with its tramway would turn with us to descend³ the gorge, and we should hesitate upon the adventure of boarding the train. But now we should have the memory of our landlord’s curious eye upon us, and we should decide at last to defer⁴ the risk of explanations such an enterprise might precipitate⁵.

We should go by the great road for a time, and note something of the difference between Utopian and terrestrial engineering.

The tramway, the train road, the culverts, and bridges, the Urnerloch tunnel, into which the road plunges⁶, will all be beautiful things.

There is nothing in machinery⁷, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection; a thing of human making is for the most part ugly in proportion to the poverty of its constructive⁸ thought, to the failure of its producer fully⁹ to grasp the purpose of its being. Everything to which men continue to give thought and attention, which they make and remake in the same direction, and with a continuing desire to do as well as they can, grows beautiful inevitably¹⁰. Things made by mankind under modern conditions are ugly, primarily because our social organisation¹¹ is ugly, because we live in an atmosphere of snatch and uncertainty¹², and do everything in an underbred strenuous¹³ manner. This is the misfortune of machinery, and not its fault. Art, like some beautiful plant, lives on its atmosphere, and when the atmosphere is good, it will grow everywhere, and when it is bad nowhere. If we smashed and buried every machine, every furnace, every factory in the world, and without any further change set ourselves to home industries, hand labour, spade husbandry, sheep-folding and pig minding, we should still do things in the same haste, and achieve nothing but dirtiness, inconvenience, bad air, and another gaunt and gawky reflection of our intellectual and moral disorder¹⁴. We should mend nothing.

But in Utopia a man who designs a tram road will be a cultivated man, an artist craftsman¹⁵; he will strive, as a good writer, or a painter strives, to achieve the simplicity¹⁶ of perfection. He will make his girders and rails and parts as gracious as that first engineer, Nature, has made the stems of her plants and the joints¹⁷ and gestures of her animals. To esteem¹⁸ him a sort of anti-artist, to count every man who makes things with his unaided thumbs an artist, and every man who uses machinery as a brute¹⁹, is merely a passing phase of human stupidity. This tram road beside us will be a triumph of design. The idea will be so unfamiliar²⁰ to us that for a time it will not occur to us that it is a system of beautiful objects at all. We shall admire its ingenious adaptation to the need of a district that is buried half the year in snow, the hard bed below, curved and guttered²¹ to do its own clearing, the great arched sleeper²² masses, raising the rails a good two yards above the ground, the easy, simple standards and insulators²³. Then it will creep in upon our minds, “But, by Jove! This is designed!”

Indeed the whole thing will be designed.

Later on, perhaps, we may find students in an art school working in competition to design an electric tram, students who know something of modern metallurgy, and something of electrical engineering, and we shall find people as keenly critical of a signal box or an iron bridge as they are on earth of ——! Heavens! what are they critical about on earth?

The quality and condition of a dress tie!

We should make some unpatriotic comparisons with our own planet, no doubt.

1 gorge   

n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃

参考例句：

• East of the gorge leveled out.峡谷东面地势变得平坦起来。
• It made my gorge rise to hear the news.这消息令我作呕。

2 ransacked   

v.彻底搜查( ransack的过去式和过去分词 )；抢劫，掠夺

参考例句：

• The house had been ransacked by burglars. 这房子遭到了盗贼的洗劫。
• The house had been ransacked of all that was worth anything. 屋子里所有值钱的东西都被抢去了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

3 descend   

vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降

参考例句：

• I hope the grace of God would descend on me.我期望上帝的恩惠。
• We're not going to descend to such methods.我们不会沦落到使用这种手段。

4 defer   

vt.推迟，拖延；vi.(to)遵从，听从，服从

参考例句：

• We wish to defer our decision until next week.我们希望推迟到下星期再作出决定。
• We will defer to whatever the committee decides.我们遵从委员会作出的任何决定。

5 precipitate   

adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物

参考例句：

• I don't think we should make precipitate decisions.我认为我们不应该贸然作出决定。
• The king was too precipitate in declaring war.国王在宣战一事上过于轻率。

6 plunges   

n.跳进，投入vt.使投入，使插入，使陷入vi.投入，跳进，陷入v.颠簸( plunge的第三人称单数 )；暴跌；骤降；突降

参考例句：

• Even before he plunges into his program, he has his audience in his pocket. 他的节目甚至还没有出场，就已控制住了观众。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• 'Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.' “大人，他头冲下跳下山坡去了，像往河里跳一样。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

7 machinery   

n.(总称)机械，机器；机构

参考例句：

• Has the machinery been put up ready for the broadcast?广播器材安装完毕了吗？
• Machinery ought to be well maintained all the time.机器应该随时注意维护。

8 constructive   

adj.建设的，建设性的

参考例句：

• We welcome constructive criticism.我们乐意接受有建设性的批评。
• He is beginning to deal with his anger in a constructive way.他开始用建设性的方法处理自己的怒气。

9 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

10 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

11 organisation   

n.组织，安排，团体，有机休

参考例句：

• The method of his organisation work is worth commending.他的组织工作的方法值得称道。
• His application for membership of the organisation was rejected.他想要加入该组织的申请遭到了拒绝。

12 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。

13 strenuous   

adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的

参考例句：

• He made strenuous efforts to improve his reading. 他奋发努力提高阅读能力。
• You may run yourself down in this strenuous week.你可能会在这紧张的一周透支掉自己。

14 disorder   

n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调

参考例句：

• When returning back,he discovered the room to be in disorder.回家后，他发现屋子里乱七八糟。
• It contained a vast number of letters in great disorder.里面七零八落地装着许多信件。

15 craftsman   

n.技工，精于一门工艺的匠人

参考例句：

• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。
• The craftsman is working up the mass of clay into a toy figure.艺人把一团泥捏成玩具形状。

16 simplicity   

n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯

参考例句：

• She dressed with elegant simplicity.她穿着朴素高雅。
• The beauty of this plan is its simplicity.简明扼要是这个计划的一大特点。

17 joints   

接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语）

参考例句：

• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on gas mains. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在煤气的总管道上了。
• Expansion joints of various kinds are fitted on steam pipes. 各种各样的伸缩接头被安装在蒸气管道上了。

18 esteem   

n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• The veteran worker ranks high in public love and esteem.那位老工人深受大伙的爱戴。

19 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

20 unfamiliar   

adj.陌生的，不熟悉的

参考例句：

• I am unfamiliar with the place and the people here.我在这儿人地生疏。
• The man seemed unfamiliar to me.这人很面生。

21 guttered   

vt.形成沟或槽于…（gutter的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Her screen career all practical purposes, had guttered out. 她的银幕生涯实际上默默无闻地结束了。 来自互联网
• The torches guttered in the breeze, casting wavering shadows upon the battlements. 火把在风中闪烁不定，它的影子也随着在墙壁上摇曳着。 来自互联网

22 sleeper   

n.睡眠者，卧车，卧铺

参考例句：

• I usually go up to London on the sleeper. 我一般都乘卧车去伦敦。
• But first he explained that he was a very heavy sleeper. 但首先他解释说自己睡觉很沉。

23 insulators   

绝缘、隔热或隔音等的物质或装置( insulator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There is no sharp line separating conductors from insulators. 实际上并没有一个明显的界限将半导体和绝缘体分开。
• To reduce heat losses the pipes are covered by thermal insulators. 为了减少热散失，管子外包保温层。